


afterlife

by lesbianbuckys



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Being Human (UK) Fusion, Angst with a Happy Ending, Ghosts, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, My English teacher would be proud, Supernatural Elements, Vampires, Werewolves, it's very existentialist, not force ghosts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-23
Updated: 2017-10-23
Packaged: 2019-01-21 20:46:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12465632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesbianbuckys/pseuds/lesbianbuckys
Summary: “I don’t even like tea,” Jyn groaned, cradling the mug in her hands, steam rising and evaporating into the air, “I used to. Then I moved in with a ghost who never stops making tea, and now I can’t stand it.”





	afterlife

Cassian hated being dead.

 

He wasn’t angry at the unfairness of dying. Or jealous of the living. Or upset at the prospect of an eternity alone. Or pissed off knowing he would never get to see the world beyond the four white walls of his house.

 

He was just so fucking bored.

 

The novelty had soon morphed into utter monotonous apathy. _Deadliness._ Knocking books off shelves and banging against walls to scare the endless stream of cops and detectives was no longer amusing. Slamming doors and throwing mugs across the room when his old landlord guided prospective tenants through his hallway wasn’t funny anymore. He haunted his own house with a melancholic presence, an indifference that felt foreign, clouding his consciousness with a murky haze of despondency, the world blurred around the edges, as if he had just woken up from a deep sleep and the tiredness still wracked his body.

 

The world seemed partially obscured by a black veil, distorting the actuality he was untethered from. Reality was rippled, like he was under water, splintering and fractured like glass, separated from life by his own dense, spectral existence. He was living (unliving? deathing?) in a goddamn Nietzsche book.

 

Yeah, being a ghost was shit.

 

Cassian soon learned that he could interact with inanimate objects, but not living things. For the first two days, it was hilarious, calling Kay from across the house, watching him bound towards him and jumping through his formless body, before staring in confusion and barking indignantly at him (he made a mental note that animals could see him, but not humans - he was slowly beginning to learn the rules of his new existence).

 

But then Leia adopted Kay, and Cassian was alone. Again.

 

He knew he couldn’t keep the mutt around, not when he would fall through furniture if he let his mind wander, not when he couldn’t even leave the house to take Kay for walks, but it still stung when Leia pulled him gently through the door, Kay’s mournful eyes still watching Cassian’s lifeless apparition as he whined and struggled against Leia’s insistence, before they stepped beyond the threshold of his house, the entrance to the real world and the point of his eternal, deathly imprisonment.

 

He had to remind himself that Kay would be loved with Leia as he watched his only remnant of his physical reality leave, the only residual fragment that he was alive, he was real, vanish in an instant.

 

Cassian knew that somewhere he had a grave, headstone with his name etched into it, but the echoing emptiness of his stark house felt more like his tomb, a final resting place for his tortured soul.

 

* * *

 

Bodhi turned off the engine, exhaling loudly as he shook Jyn awake, who was curled up in a position that couldn’t be comfortable, arm propping up her chin against the window. She rubbed at her eyes, no doubt stinging from tiredness, which he felt slightly guilty about but the ever-changing sleep patterns were, unfortunately, a necessity, a sacrifice Jyn knew she was making when she agreed to live with him.

 

They had been living with each other for several years now, moving from place to place when the neighbours started to get suspicious, only renting and never buying, a reminder that everywhere was temporary. They had no roots, no lasting connections, co-workers and almost-friends fading from memory as they packed up and left without a warning, like ghosts fading in the emergence of the pink-and-gold streaked daybreak.

 

Jyn blinked the sleep from her eyes, squinting at the house in the cover of darkness, “It’s smaller than it looked in the pictures.”

 

Bodhi shrugged, “But, there’s an abandoned warehouse that’s a fifteen-minute drive from here, and the house has a basement for…” _emergencies,_ he left the sentence hanging between them.

 

Well, hopefully, they’ll never have to use the basement. For  _emergencies._

 

Jyn stared pensively at the house, and he could imagine the cogs ticking away in her mind, “It’s good enough, I guess,” she said as she stepped out of the car.

 

Bodhi was surprised she could even stand his presence, considering that her father had been ripped apart by...his kind. But Jyn was as understanding as she was vengeful, an odd combination that had him absolutely enamoured. At first, their friendship was forged out of necessity, the desperate, primal clawing at survival and a utilitarian convenience. Somewhere along the line, they had slipped into a comfortable companionship - Jyn relaxed in his presence and he laughed more easily with her. They both relied on each other, their survival was mutually dependent, a symbiotic friendship that felt as easy as breathing (well, in Jyn’s case at least).

 

Bodhi helped her unload their belongings while she muttered something about _“hanging up the sun-blocking curtains first, can’t have you burnt to a crisp in the morning”_ (“Thanks for that, really, Jyn”).  The keys jangled as he unlocked the front door, creaking on its hinges when he forced their way inside, pushing it all the way open with his hip. Their new house was cosy. There was something homely about it, like it was filled with echoing, blissful memories and lifetimes of warmth. Bodhi wondered what lives had been lived here, what people had this house seen.

 

Then they noticed the stranger sitting in the living room.

 

He glared at them as his pale features twisted into confusion, “Who the fuck are you?”

 

* * *

 

“I don’t even like tea,” Jyn groaned, cradling the mug in her hands, steam rising and evaporating into the air, “I used to. Then I moved in with a ghost _who never stops making tea_ , and now I can’t stand it.”

 

Cassian sighed, before handing the new mug to Bodhi, who took it with a pleasing smile, the heat warming his fingers as the sweet smell of sugar and vanilla wafted through their living room (and Bodhi can’t help but think of the irony), “I’m sorry, it’s an impulse.”

 

“You can’t even drink it! You’re dead!”

Cassian winced like he’s in pain, sitting down next to Bodhi, his incorporeal form so solid and icy against him, basking in their shared coldness, “I like your tea, Cassian,” he said honestly. The ghost gave him a faint, tentative smile and the air caught in Bodhi’s throat as if he was breathing for the first time in five decades.

 

Jyn scoffed, “That because you don’t want him to go all _Paranormal Activity_ on us.”

 

Bodhi didn’t understand the reference, so he just silently sipped his tea. It was too sugary for his liking but he drank it anyway, if only to make Cassian feel better. Dying, but not really dying, was hard. Bodhi remembered his death, but at least he had pretended to still be alive for a while, say goodbye to family and friends, before moving on, concealing the _thing_ he’d become. Cassian, however, was given no such comfort, no closure, as the leftover, shattered fragments of his life stared through him with unseeing eyes, his unheard voice shouting only to himself. It must be like living in a paradox, watching the world rush past while never moving.

 

He knew Jyn was being unfairly cruel, but it was hard to be upset with her - the full moon was tomorrow, and there was always the anxiety that hung over the both of them leading up to the first transformation in a new place. He would apologize to Cassian on her behalf later, but for now, he drank the too-sugary tea and kicked Jyn in the shin, earning a clear, chiming laugh from the ghost next to him.

  


* * *

 

Somehow, their duo had become a trio. Cassian melted into lives without warning, but it felt like he had haunted them for years, an easy, ethereal presence that felt natural and alive. His bouts of melancholy and acerbic sense of humour fit perfectly with Bodhi’s own placid demeanour and Jyn’s fiery, intense devotion to the both of them, like a jigsaw puzzle none of them was missing, fallen into place.

 

Cassian seemed to take the knowledge that yes, ghosts were actually real and yes, vampires and werewolves were real too, pretty well, all things considered, but Bodhi knew he was still struggling to adjust to the hellish limbo he was trapped him. Bodhi had met quite a few ghosts in his fifty years of undeath, and he knew the consequences that lay in store for Cassian if he continued like this - it started with the depression, the dejection at the stolen life he no longer had, but it will morph into a frenzy, Bodhi knew, a madness and irrational rage at the living, bubbling and boiling away in the quiet, spectral areas of his still lingering soul. A poltergeist, a vengeful wraith formed of invisible fury, chaos and deranged insanity where a formless soul should be.

 

Bodhi couldn’t resurrect the dead, but he could bring back humanity.

 

And so here they were, sitting on the roof and staring up at the glowing, full moon, filling Bodhi’s dead muscles with warmth, like the ghostly echo of sunlight he found himself craving sometimes, more than blood, than the thrill of the hunt, the illicit rush of power as he felt the life escape from his prey, vanishing into the bleak void, body still warm as he gorged himself, a feast.

 

Bodhi sometimes forgot he was a vegetarian before he was turned.

 

Cassian looked radiant in the moonlight, he was almost translucent, ghost-white and clear in the inky darkness. The sky above them was dotted with the pinprick light of stars, as if the God that had forgotten them both had poked holes in the blanket of night above them.

 

In an empty warehouse, away from them, Jyn was a savage beast, thrashing and roaring against her concrete prison, a slave to the same primal bloodlust Bodhi so desperately tried to hide, locking away a piece of his soulless self, blackened and vile.

 

“Does it get easier?” Cassian whispered, shattering the night’s silence like glass, “Being dead, but feeling alive.”

 

Bodhi sighed, “Yes and no. You get used to it, you learn to live as much as you can,” he bumped his shoulder against the ghost’s, sending icy shockwaves through his unbeating veins, “You just need to have others to make you feel human. Keep you real.”

 

“Like you?”

 

“And Jyn,” he supplied.

 

Cassian had a faraway look in his eyes, nearly tearing up (could ghosts cry?), “Jyn’s still mortal. She’ll grow old and...leave,” he turned on his side, directly facing Bodhi, “Until I find out what unfinished business I have, I’ll still be around, existing but not existing.”

 

They were so close, and Bodhi _could_ see through him, the world past him distorted in a blue hue, fading before his eyes, slipping back into unreality. He reached out to cup Cassian’s face, feeling the depths of his stomach churn white waves at the touch, and he revelled at the sight of Cassian’s growing opaqueness. A familiar coldness flowed through his body, one that chased away the evil sins inside him.

 

“We can find out how you died and why you’re still here. Together. I’ll be with you, if you want,” Bodhi promised gently, voice cracking.

 

“You’ll stay with me?” he sounded so earnest, so scared at the murky half-life that lay uncertain ahead of him.

 

One day, Bodhi would convince him that their fractured, illusory existence wasn't a curse, that living was a matter of perspective, but today was not that day. Right now, Cassian felt solid against him. Real. Living. Like life hadn’t been ripped away from him, and he still clung to the golden glow of vitality.

 

Bodhi couldn’t help it - he was a _vampire_ , insatiable desire and hunger was part of the deal - he leaned in and kissed him. Softly. Coldly. Two ice statues pressing against each other gently, as if they were scared they would rupture the other, seeking out warmth - not literal warmth, but a calming, affectionate sincerity that they were both alive. They existed because they felt the tightening of unbeating hearts and choked on an unbreathed exhale. Cassian’s smiled against his lips, ghosting his fingertips across Bodhi’s skin as his other hand cupped the back of his neck.

 

“I’ll stay with you for eternity, if you’ll have me,” Bodhi whispered.

 

He could’ve sworn his heart pounded again at Cassian’s luminous grin, and the living ghost leaned in to kiss him again.

**Author's Note:**

> look i love Being Human so much (if you've never seen it, it's about a vampire, a ghost and a werewolf living together. it's amazing, go watch it) in case you couldn't tell, cassian was a ghost, jyn is a werewolf and bodhi is a vampire.
> 
> in my head, Bodhi died in the Kent State University massacre in 1970, which was an anti-Vietnam War protest in which 4 students were killed, and somehow he was turned after that.
> 
> it's also implied that Cassian was murdered.
> 
> for Day 4 of Sniperpilot Halloween (loosely based on the prompt "I think this ghost is haunting me and damn it, he's cute")
> 
> visit me on tumblr @atcmix


End file.
